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The Pope, the Cardinal, and the "Phantom Heresy"

Pope Leo XIII sent a formal letter to Cardinal
James Gibbons, archbishop of Baltimore and senior hierarch of the Catholic
church in America on January 22, 1899. This was not an encyclical, which
would have been addressed to the entire church, but a pastoral warning
against what has been called the "phantom heresy." The letter,
entitled Testem benevolentiae condemned views which critics said
characterized "Americanism." These included a denigration of
religious vows and an attempt to adapt the church's traditional teaching
to conform to the needs of the modern world. The pope also presented the
proper stand to be made by American bishops on the matter.

The controversy began with the ideas of Father Isaac Thomas Hecker (1819-1888),
an American-German convert to Catholicism, who founded the missionary
Society of St. Paul the Apostle. Hecker wanted to bring the Catholic religion
to Americans in a form that would not offend the American idea of freedom
of conscience and he also sought to create an American priesthood. Furthermore,
he wanted to help immigrant Catholics to understand the American way of
life. Hecker was successful in presenting the faith to non-Catholics.
However, he was criticized for his belief that the church should adapt
itself to the religious needs of every people and culture. Some even said
he believed the church should pass over or modify its doctrines.

Cardinal Gibbons knew that immigrant Catholic laity and clergy were stigmatized
by many Americans as foreigners adhering to a foreign religion, and he
was in favor of helping the newcomers to accept the nation's political
and social customs. He was also interested in winning American converts,
but he was concerned that Hecker's teachings could be misunderstood. Hecker
had his critics in America among Jesuits, the German and other bishops,
and in Michael A. Corrigan, archbishop of New York. Hecker's ideas were
misunderstood overseas, especially after the reading of a paper about
his teachings at a Catholic conference in Switzerland in 1897. Soon this
controversy reached the ears of the pope, especially through the criticism
of French clerics.

Cardinal Gibbons replied to the pope's letter, assuring him that "This
doctrine, which I deliberately call extravagant and absurd, this Americanism
as it has been called, has nothing in common with the views, aspirations,
doctrine and conduct of Americans. I do not think that there can be found
in the entire country a bishop, a priest, or even a layman with a knowledge
of his religion who has ever uttered such enormities. No, that it not--
it never has been and never will be -- our Americanism."

Cardinal Gibbons assurances were successful. Leo XIII, wrote to him again
three years later observing " . . while the changes and tendencies
of nearly all the nations which were Catholic for many centuries give
cause for sorrow, the state of your churches, in this flourishing youthfulness,
cheers our heart and fills it with delight."

The controversy surrounding the "phantom heresy," as it continued
to be called, had no effect on the average Roman Catholic. It did, however,
slow down "progressive" elements in the Church, and conservatives
continued to insist that it existed, and, later, considered that it was
the seed of Modernism, a movement condemned by Pius X in 1907.